Published 5:34 pm, Wednesday, October 30, 2013

With the unlikely inclusion of Schubert on this Saturday evening's concert of the Calder Quartet at EMPAC, the program picks up a thread from earlier in the season. "Death and the Maiden," as the composer's 14th quartet is popularly known, served as a point of inspiration for the experimental theater piece titled "La Jeune-Fille et la Mort" (''Death and the Young-Girl'') that was performed on Oct. 12 by the Quebec troop Bureau de l'APA.

It's a thoughtful way that EMPAC curator Ash Bulayev brought together some widely disparate events. As for the Calder Quartet, the invitation to play Schubert was a chance to also look backward, at least a bit.

"We did that quartet a good amount when we were younger," says violinist Andrew Bulbrook.

Younger, of course, is a relative term here. All of the members of the Los Angeles-based Calder Quartet are in their mid-30s. Already in its 15th season, the group formed when the players were students at University of Southern California. Since then, the Calder has regularly earned accolades as an example of the phenomenal new talents that are enlivening today's classical music scene.

Schubert's rather monumental "Death and the Maiden," which runs about 40 minutes, provides the Calder its own opportunity to take stock of time — within a performance, and within a career.

"A hidden difficulty in these large-scale pieces is the stamina," says Bulbrook. "In the last movement, you have to be active and intense and committed the whole way. When we were young, we might lose our juice or our focus. But it has to stay exciting and vibrant. And you have to still be in control and not punch drunk."

Time to look at the example of how more senior players handle such challenges.

"The older quartets that have been on the stage for many years will save their energy and then put it all out," observes Bulbrook. "You can see people pace themselves, so that when you need the energy it's there."

While still mastering how to sustain its resources, the Calder doesn't shy away from taking on large-scale projects and exploring new repertoire. The group is currently in the midst of a survey of the complete Bartok quartets spread over three concerts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Within each of those programs, they're including a contemporary piece, drawing from the many quartets that have been written specifically for their talents.

The upcoming EMPAC program includes Mozart and Webern, along with the Schubert, but also features a short work written by Don Davis, a composer who's better known in Hollywood than in traditional concert settings. Probably his most famous soundtracks are for the "Matrix" film trilogy.

Davis' "Vexed Man" was one of several pieces that the Calder commissioned for a program given last year at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. That event coincided with a retrospective of busts by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, an 18th-century sculptor whose famed "character heads" depict faces with extreme expressions.

"Generally these Messerschmidts aren't people smiling, but something much more intense," says Bulbrook. "And the score to 'Vexed Man' has these reverse effects or hairpin turns, like the music is going backward, which creates a really neat texture."

Even though "Vexed Man" is only a few minutes in duration, it sounds packed with enough contemporary ideas to balance out 40 minutes of Schubert and earn the whole concert its slot at EMPAC.